The “Invisible Empire Of The South”

ASU HST 200 (Historical Themes) The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 The “Invisible Empire Of The South” Using violence as their main tool, paramilitary White-supremacist terror groups in the South contributed to the fall of Reconstruction. The most infamous is the Ku Klux Klan, sometimes known as the "Invisible Empire of the South." The first leader of the Klan was former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who formed the organization in 1866 as an oath-bound fraternal society of Confederate veterans in Tennessee. The society created ornate rituals and extravagant titles for its top members, like Grand Wizard, Grand Dragon, Grand Titan, and Grand Cyclops. The name of the organization is probably derived from the Greek word kuklos, which means circle. However, this fraternal organization quickly turned into a vigilante terrorist group that used acts of violence and intimidation to express the collective displeasure of Southern White people over the outcome of the war and the direction of Radical Reconstruction. In order to prevent newly emancipated Black people from exercising their rights and liberties as citizens, the Klan threatened them. Other anti-Black vigilante organizations in the South started using the Klan moniker to carry out heinous acts of murder against anybody they believed to be a Reconstruction tool. Historians have observed that Klan groups in the South did, in fact, function independently and for a variety of reasons. While some could have truly thought they were making amends, others might have only been gratifying their macabre urge for bloodshed. Furthermore, the Klan was not the only group of racial vigilantes. During this period, other organizations also emerged, such as the Knights of the White Camelia and the White League, both from Louisiana, and the Red Shirts from Mississippi. To win elections, the Klan and other groups of a similar nature also assisted the Democratic Party. Despite the wide range of membership in the Klan, the organization generally focused its efforts on persecuting those who had been freed and those who were deemed "carpetbaggers," a derogatory term for those from the North who were said to have moved to the South in order to gain political power and wealth at the expense of Southerners. The colorful word conveyed the contempt that Southerners had for these guys, expressing the widespread belief that these men, seeing a wonderful chance, packed up all they owned into carpetbags—a fashionable kind of baggage at the time—and headed south. This description implies that these individuals were vagrants driven only by the need for rapid money, having come from humble beginnings. As it turned out, these northerners were mostly young, idealistic, and frequently well educated individuals who had been influenced by northern attempts to spearhead the modernization of the South. However, a White populace in the South who was grieving over loss and the region's economic downturn found resonance in the perception of them as con artists preying on the region in its hour of need. Scalawags, or Southern White Reconstruction supporters, also aroused a tremendous deal of animosity since they were perceived as traitors to the South. They were also targeted by the KKK and other similar organizations. The widespread, although mostly untrue, myth of the northern carpetbagger was used by the Klan as a means of reinstating White supremacy and toppling Republican state governments in the South (Figure 16.13). The Klan burnt public schools to keep Black people from obtaining an education and to punish them for trying to better their station in life or being “uppity” in order to maintain a society controlled by White people. The Klan harassed and even killed liberated persons and their White sympathizers in an attempt to prevent Black residents from exercising their right to vote. Workers for the Freedmen's Bureau and members of the Union League were frequently intimidated by Klan members. The Klan even carried out political assassinations, murdering three state legislators from South Carolina and an incumbent U.S. representative from Arkansas. Klan strategies included riding up to the victims' homes armed and disguised, shooting into them or setting them on fire. In Mississippi, for example, fifty hooded Klansmen rode up to a local schoolteacher's house to voice their disapproval of the school tax and to recommend that she think about leaving. This was one of the more violent techniques used. Other strategies used creative deceit to intimidate. One such tactic was to pose as the deceased spirits of fallen Confederate soldiers and do acts intended to give the impression that one was supernatural. Whatever the strategy, the ultimate objective was always to restore White supremacy as the dominant ideology and bring the South back to conditions that were generally similar to those of the antebellum period. Black communities were torn apart, Black people were forced back to previous patterns of social and political subservience, and Black people's economic independence was eradicated. The Klan also severely damaged Black people's political rights and reclaimed White dominance over Black women's bodies and Black men's masculinity. However, the president and Congress did not stand by and did their part to put an end to the carnage. In 1870, President Grant ordered Congress to look into the Klan on the governor of North Carolina's demand. The Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States was established by Congress in 1871 as a reaction. The committee heard testimony from Southerners who had been liberated, and in 1872 it released a thirteen-volume report detailing the violent strategies the Klan employed to undermine democracy in the region. In an effort to eradicate the Klan, Congress also approved three statutes. The purpose of the 1870 and 1871 Enforcement Acts, often known as the "Force Acts," was to make it illegal to intimidate voters during elections and to grant the federal government the authority to punish offenses against emancipated individuals in federal courts as opposed to state ones. This last measure, which is a part of the third Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, was deemed by Congress to be essential to guarantee that prosecutions in southern states that support the Klan would not be judged by White juries. In addition, the legislation provided President Grant the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, carrying over President Lincoln's wartime authority. It also permitted the president to implement martial rule in regions under the control of the Klan. Due to the suspension, anybody found to be involved in Klan activities might spend an endless amount of time behind bars. President Grant frequently exercised the authority that Congress had given him, particularly in South Carolina, when federal forces declared martial law in nine counties in an attempt to thwart Klan activity. But the federal government was up against well-established local groups and a White populace that was adamantly against radical reconstruction. Slowly or not at all, changes occurred, and disenchantment developed. The federal government's attempts to quell paramilitary terror in the South began to taper off after 1872.